“You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –over and over announcing your placein the family of things.” ― Mary Oliver 

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words.

This may sound easy. It isn’t.

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel - but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling - not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why?

Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time - and whenever we do it, we are not poets.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world - unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

Does this sound dismal? It isn’t.

It’s the most wonderful life on earth.

Or so I feel.

— e.e. cummings

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way."

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.” ― Charles Bukowski

“there are worse thingsthan being alonebut it often takesdecades to realize thisand most often when you doit's too lateand there's nothing worsethan too late” ― Charles Bukowski

“unless it comes out ofyour soul like a rocket,unless being still woulddrive you to madness orsuicide or murder,don't do it.unless the sun inside you isburning your gut,don't do it.

when it is truly time,and if you have been chosen,it will do it byitself and it will keep on doing ituntil you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.” ― Charles Bukowski

“NOBODY CAN SAVE YOU BUT YOURSELF AND YOU’RE WORTH SAVING. IT’S A WAR NOT EASILY WON BUT IF ANYTHING IS WORTH WINNING THEN THIS IS IT.” ― CHARLES BUKOWSKI

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.” ― Anne Lamott

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

-David Foster Wallace

Work is love made visible

You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,And all work is empty save when there is love;And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”But I say, not in sleep but in the overwakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.-Khalil Gibran

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.” ― Rumi

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

-Walt Whitman

KEEPING QUIETPABLO NERUDA

Now we will count to twelveand we will all keep stillfor once on the face of the earth,let's not speak in any language;let's stop for a second,and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic momentwithout rush, without engines;we would all be togetherin a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold seawould not harm whalesand the man gathering saltwould not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,wars with gas, wars with fire,victories with no survivors,would put on clean clothesand walk about with their brothersin the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confusedwith total inactivity.

Life is what it is about,

I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-mindedabout keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselves withdeath.

Now I'll count up to twelveand you keep quiet and I will go.

It doesn’t interest mewhat you do for a living.I want to knowwhat you ache forand if you dare to dreamof meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest mehow old you are.I want to knowif you will risklooking like a foolfor lovefor your dreamfor the adventure of being alive.It doesn’t interest mewhat planets aresquaring your moon...I want to knowif you have touchedthe centre of your own sorrowif you have been openedby life’s betrayalsor have become shrivelled and closedfrom fear of further pain.I want to knowif you can sit with painmine or your ownwithout moving to hide itor fade itor fix it.I want to knowif you can be with joymine or your ownif you can dance with wildnessand let the ecstasy fill youto the tips of your fingers and toeswithout cautioning usto be carefulto be realisticto remember the limitationsof being human.It doesn’t interest meif the story you are telling meis true.I want to know if you candisappoint anotherto be true to yourself.If you can bearthe accusation of betrayaland not betray your own soul.If you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.I want to know if you can see Beautyeven when it is not prettyevery day.And if you can source your own lifefrom its presence.I want to knowif you can live with failureyours and mineand still stand at the edge of the lakeand shout to the silver of the full moon,“Yes.”It doesn’t interest meto know where you liveor how much money you have.I want to know if you can get upafter the night of grief and despairweary and bruised to the boneand do what needs to be doneto feed the children.It doesn’t interest mewho you knowor how you came to be here.I want to know if you will standin the centre of the firewith meand not shrink back.It doesn’t interest mewhere or what or with whomyou have studied.I want to knowwhat sustains youfrom the insidewhen all else falls away.I want to knowif you can be alonewith yourselfand if you truly likethe company you keepin the empty moments.